Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Monday December 15, 2008 @02:16PM
from the i-am-lizard-hear-me-roar dept.

Novell has unveiled their latest release to the openSUSE line with 11.1. Offering both updates and new features, Novell continues to push for more openness and transparency. The new release includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, Python 2.6, Mono 2.0, OpenOffice 3.0, and many others. "[...] Our choice was also influenced by impressive changes that are transpiring in the openSUSE community, which is growing rapidly and is also becoming more open, inclusive, and transparent. Last month, the project announced its first community-elected board, a major milestone in its advancement towards community empowerment. This is a very good openSUSE release and it delivers some very impressive enhancements. The distro has evolved tremendously in the past two releases and is becoming a very solid and usable option for regular users."

Yes Mono. Software that would have required a Windows box is now running on a Linux box.

[sarcasm]It's terrible that organizations have another option for migrating to a non Microsoft Platform. Obviously they should rewrite their software from scratch or stay away from Linux. Linux is pure and holy!!! The power of Linus compels you!

Samba, Wine, Evolution, Pidgin, etc, etc, are all evil too.[/sarcasm]

Yeah I know... all those packages that could be useful for migrating away from a Genuine Microsoft OS are e

The Faculty of Physical Sciences at the University of Glasgow recently migrated their main logon server across to Slackware Linux. Shane Kelly writes: "A little while ago, the requirements for data transfer from some overseas research sites jumped tremendously, meaning I needed to assess the impact on our aging 'log in' server that was used as a portal to the Physics network." Their original server running SUSE Linux 9.3 had been working well, handling numerous login sessions, but its P3 CPU, 100 Mb network card and 96 MB of RAM were no longer enough to handle the increasing load. A new AMD Opteron-based server was selected and when it came time to choose a distribution, he headed here to DistroWatch.com to help decide. "I have never liked Red Hat (too many 'extras' between you and the operating system), ditto SUSE, and looking at the top twenty Linux distributions on DistroWatch, I could see that many were more suited to desktops, while many more had no 'pedigree' and were simply re-vamped editions of something else. Then my eye hit upon an old-timer that was said to be a bit difficult, devoid of GUI management tools, and rock solid. Yep, I'm talking about Slackware, the oldest surviving Linux distribution, now at version 12.1". The author is happy to be re-acquainted with his old friend Slackware and is recommending it to others for use on their servers.

i am aware of that, it was a copy & paste from distrowatch, if i edited it then it would not be an accurate "copy & paste" regarless of the dated distro version posted. i have slack 12.2 running famously great on all my PCs (i been a slacker for years)...

Novell is "pushing" for more openness? Why does it take "pushing"? Novell owns SuSE - it can just open it as much as it wants. Finally opening the project governance to the community that's been contributing for years isn't even "pushing", or at least not harder than inertia.

Novell does seem to be gradually getting around to opening SuSE. Which is good. But since SuSE could be doing even better if Novell just opened it more, and more quickly, bottlenecked by only it's community's maturity and not by corporate hesitance, I'm not believing this happy talk about "pushing".

A reasonable alternative is to use a distribution which keeps a clear distinction between free software and non-free.

Unlike RH and some other companies, Novell didn't claimed any openness until community shaped around openSUSE.

Just recall Fedora earlier days: RH claimed it was open (in whatever sense they meant it), yet RH retained rights to do whatever it liked with it. And there was no community - or rather original Fedora community was simply excluded from the development process.

Novell did it right - they learned mistakes of Fedora and did none of them. They first forked and opened distro, assigned internal dev

Deal is between M$ and Novell. Between you (as user) and Novell stands GPL. Users are NOT affected by the deal.

If Novell truly goes to dark side... Stop. Actually, if you read history of Novell, you would notice that they are of the dark side: company run by lawyers (M$ being company run by sales).

Though point stands: flaming Novell for deal with M$ is silly and pointless as it doesn't affect normal SUSE users. On other side, business users (== paying customers) are more than happy about the deal and

Please answer the following question sincerely: do you still believe in Santa Claus?

Please learn basics, GPL v2, v3 being a good start.

WTF? You are making no sense at all. I do understand the GPL. I also understand msft. Therefore, it is easy for me to see how msft is constantly trying to undermine the GPL, and anything else that may someday threaten msft's monopoloy.

BTW: I am not saying msft has a monolopy, that was the US DoJ. And msft using "Tonya Harding tactics" are the words of a US federal judge.

I have followed the msft/scox-scam for over five years. I have also followed the msft/acacia scam, and the msft ooxml scam. The msft/novl s

I am a long-time SuSE fan, since it had the least problems with my hardware (esp. laptops), could get my favorite package manager (apt, although since 10.3 & zypper you don't need it), and its config tool Yast was better than most things out there. When our company needed 64bit servers (running VMware among other things) about 4 years ago, SuSE was the best option.And with every version, it did get much better... until the dreaded 11. At first I installed a SuSE 11 beta on an AMD system to check out KDE 4. As you all know, KDE 4.0 was nothing to look at unless you were a KDE developer, so I didn't have much fun there as a KDE user, however I noticed that the system was VERY unstable, even for a beta. I am not used to seeing hard locks even on beta linux distros.Anyway, I gave SuSE 11 a shot when it came out. I installed it on a very common Core 2 system (Asus mobo, fresh bios etc). A few seconds after you started KDE (random number), even WITHOUT doing anything, the screen would freeze, and there was nothing you could do, no ctrl+F1, or ssh etc, it was a hard lock. If you switched off and on, nothing out of the ordinary was on the system logs... Tried three clean installations, same behavior, gave up and reinstalled 10.3 (which was always fine). I never had a hard lock with out any clue in the logs, so I could not imagine how I could troubleshoot (without randomly trying things)...Sorry for the rant, I hope I am allowed a little bit as a SuSE fan. Anyway really hope 11.1 is what 11 should have been for me...

Overall, its one of the most feature rich KDE based distros, and like in PCLinxOS, I love having the option to restart into another distro. I found the beta releases to have better hardware detection than 11, but the over all system ran too slow for daily use. Maybe my hardware is too old (amd64 Semperon 3200+ )?

After a month of testing, I gave up and went back to kubuntu, but the plasma bar's lack of auto-hide in KDE4 keeps me hunting for something better.

hardlock without any log records sounds like a hardware issue - maybe the newer version used some capabilities that triggered this.what you could have tried, redirecting syslog to a remote networked machine - though in my experience this has not helped much, as nothing gets logged in that case either.

speaking about suse/opensuse release quality, personally, i felt that including zmd as default was _the_ worst release[s] (10.1-10.2, if i remember correctly).parts of zmd were written in mono (eww), and it was

"Anyway, I gave SuSE 11 a shot when it came out. I installed it on a very common Core 2 system (Asus mobo, fresh bios etc). A few seconds after you started KDE (random number), even WITHOUT doing anything, the screen would freeze, and there was nothing you could do, no ctrl+F1, or ssh etc, it was a hard lock. If you switched off and on, nothing out of the ordinary was on the system logs... Tried three clean installations, same behavior"

I had a similar experience with version 11. Interestingly it went away

Very interesting, I always use ReiserFS so that might have been the problem. I absolutely hate Beagle (find & locate are much better), but it might have gotten installed without me noticing. Of course after a while I always notice beagle (slows things down, delays my home dir rsync backups), but maybe this time it didn't give me any chance!So thanks for the info.

I set up my parents with openSuSE 11.0 on an older desktop of mine. It runs fine. They are using KDE 4.0. I have to fix a few things now and then, I had to show them how to use some stuff, but they are using it now to print (Canon MP210, network share... slightly buggy when accessing via network on XP but it still works), e-mail (gmail), web (firefox), video (can't remember the program), music (amarok, pandora), documents (openoffice.org, pdf reading), etc.

I'll upgrade my laptop to openSuSE 11.1 first and if it works, upgrade their desktop as well. Hopefully it will support the video card (Radeon 9800) drivers a little bit better.

Frankly, the Microsoft/Novell "evil deal" thing is extremely frustrating to me. I'm working with both SuSE and RedHat a lot at work now, and I frankly prefer SuSE to RedHat as far as usability. I've tried Ubuntu and I don't like Gnome, and it was harder to customize Ubuntu (at least for me) than SuSE 10.3/11.0.

No, SuSE did not pass the grandma-install test, but it passed the set-up-for-parents-and-let-them-use test.

Yes, really, this is not even freshmeat material. It was not even released yet... Who cares? And well, as long as Novell is behind this I'd rather not care at all about testing it, it is not like the other distros didn't do a much better job at those things that were mentioned so eagerly in this slashvertisement...

OpenSUSE is a good Linux distro - one of the top five best, and probably the best. I have 10.3 on my old machine and just installed 11.0 on my new machine. Only complaint I have is now I have to consider whether to upgrade to 11.1. As usual, I'll probably hold off for a couple months to let the bugs get fixed. And I won't touch KDE 4.x until it's at 4.2 at least - too many people complaining about bugs for me to consider using it, although 4.1 is allegedly stable for many people.

Once again, I said when it occurred that Novell's deal with Microsoft was irrelevant for Linux and FOSS in general except to a bunch of FSF psychos and that has proven to be the case. Only lames with no clue continue to bring it up every time Novell is mentioned.

Not to sound too Monty Python-esque, but Brain Damage does not a cogent argument make. I did not prove nor disprove anything other than what was already stated. The deal equed out by Microsoft and Novell amounted to nothing more than "Feel Good" protection for Novell's customers, who may or may not have been clamoring for this type of assurance.

In any respect, Microsoft paid Novell more money as they probably felt that this would now be the death knell for Linux' claims of non infringement. Hovsepian, an

In no way does her posts nor your reply support your assertion that OpenSUSE is somehow magically 'unsafe'.

It still looks like GPL to me.

Your comment about MS suing you is even more far-fatched.

The concept of MS suing linux users is pretty darn far-fetched. But if you're really worried about it, then you WANT to be using Novell, as then you are specifically and quite effectively covered by Novell's indemnification program.

Love to see the deep research being done. If you pursue the links and the topic in general you will discover that there is an _uncertianty_ (q.v. FUD) that has been raised.

You clearly haven't taken the time to read or analyze the indemnification program. It seems to protect you by giving you Microsoft's blessing, but under those blessed terms your indemnification is limited in duration and enjoins you from relicense and commercial or for-profit redistribution and some other interesting, delicious, or vague

Th license "you get" lets you "off the hook" by restricting your ability to use the technology for _anything_ except personal use.

That is, if you promise never to get paid working on open source for any reason, and to never use open source for anything but (effectively) artistic reasons; and if you promise only to use the SUSE parts for that artistic purpose, then they promise not to sue you FOR A FEW YEARS. That's right, the promise not to sue is a weak promise and has an expiration date.

How does the Novell/Microsoft deal affect your rights? You have not signed it.

If it did affect your rights in some nefarious way, how would not using Suse counteract that?

But still, being aware to look after your rights is a good instinct. Just make sure it is based on facts not FUD. The Free Software Foundation has a list of free distributions [gnu.org] which meet their standards. The FSF is generally the most legally conservative and ideologically pure outfit in the free software world, so if you use something they have approved you can be pretty certain of peace of mind.

A reasonable alternative is to use a distribution which keeps a clear distinction between free software and non-free. Debian is famous for this, but Fedora (which is what I use) also has a policy to include only free software (in recent releases anyway). The difference with the FSF-approved distributions lies in loadable firmware, but you may not be concerned about that.

(If you don't want to use Suse because you dislike Novell's business practices and their deal with Microsoft, that's your choice, but just say so rather than inventing stuff about 'legal risks'. Or if you do know of legal risks, please explain what they are so that people can fix the problem.)

SUSE always made clear distinction between commercial/non-free software they include and core OS. Core OS always was and is GPL'ed Linux.

You have a short memory. YaST was non-free not so long ago. I think Novell made it free software after they bought SuSE.
Back in the day, SuSE intentionally tried to package non-free software without warning the user: see this talk by RMS [beust.com]:

Stallman made an additional remark about Linux. Many different distributions are available, and one day, he tried to install one of t

SUSE always made clear distinction between commercial/non-free software they include and core OS. Core OS always was and is GPL'ed Linux.

You have a short memory. YaST was non-free not so long ago. I think Novell made it free software after they bought SuSE.

Well, in the days I used SUSE very extensively. And, no, SUSE never tried to hide the fact that they ship and install non-free software.

What's more, if you would dig you memory, you might recall that they pretty much from day one were stating that it is impossible to build good OS with only free software. And they were always shipping commercial software. e.g. SUSE was first Linux to include movie editing software - in the times when there was no F/LOSS alternatives. They were also shipping MP3 support - because they acquired license for that. (*)

SUSE was openly stating that they are per se not free. You can make out of SUSE free OS - yet you would loose lots of functionality, making OS non-starter in any OS comparison. And SUSE was always comparable versus Windows and Mac OS.

(*) Freely downloadable ISO image not always included all goodies of the boxed retail version.

Please note that they are talking about free as in speech. This includes Opera and pine. The latter was put on their non-OSS list because they were not 100% sure. So if in doubt, they put it on their non-oss list.

This still means that things can be distributed freely, just that the source is not as open as one would think or perhaps not available to you or to them. You are obviously free to install these programs or not.

Yeah, we will keep coming back to that. From the article I recognized, of course, Banshee, Beagle and F-Spot, but Tasque and Monsoon were new to me. A quick search confirmed both are written in Mono.
A bit further down:

OpenSUSE ships a modified version of OpenOffice.org that bundles Novell's patchset, which includes some nice improvements that Sun has declined to accept upstream for various technical and licensing reasons.

Actually, this makes a lot of sense for an Office suite that tries to be MSOffice-compatible. See, according to Redmond, VBA is not cool today - it is being phased out and replaced by Visual Studio Tools for Office [microsoft.com]. And guess what technology are those "tools" based on, and what languages do they use...

Anyway, for Gtk# development, Mono is actually pretty good - I dare say, not any worse than Python - and quite a bit faster, too. Why shouldn

Well, while you go on in fear, I'm going to continue using what I've found to be the most polished distribution for KDE4 users (out of Fedora, openSUSE, Kubuntu, and Debian). Fedora annoyingly included a pre-release version of xorg that didn't have driver support from nvidia or amd. I have no idea what's up with Kubuntu; the maintainers need to work a little harder at making it stable and fast. Debian is just missing some of the nicer GUI tools for system administration.

If you've got a better distribution to try, I'd love to hear it. (I'm really happy we have KVM ^_^)

Well, while you go on in fear, I'm going to continue using what I've found to be the most polished distribution for KDE4 users (out of Fedora, openSUSE, Kubuntu, and Debian). Fedora annoyingly included a pre-release version of xorg that didn't have driver support from nvidia or amd. I have no idea what's up with Kubuntu; the maintainers need to work a little harder at making it stable and fast. Debian is just missing some of the nicer GUI tools for system administration.

If you've got a better distribution to try, I'd love to hear it. (I'm really happy we have KVM ^_^)

Have you looked at Mandriva?

I haven't used Mandrake / Mandriva in many years (I'm an openSUSE user), but it is a KDE oriented distribution. Last time I used it, it was quite polished and worked well. I can only imagine that is still true.

Personally, I will stay with openSUSE for the foreseeable future. For me, it just works (TM)

You using X.org? Have you stripped out any Novell code from the Kernel? Did Banshee, FSpot?So you don't use OpenSuse. I happen to like Unbuntu myself but that has nothing to do with the Microsoft deal. OpenSuse is a good system from what I have seen, We use it in our office because that is what our sysadmin likes.

Oh I see, you are trying to be clever and say because a company that has a monopoly on desktops should make a deal with a Linux distro, we should also dump all our desktops and be innoperative as a company? Yes, good business sense. You should be running a fortune 500.

So by your logic, if you owe money to the mob and are now in debt for life and you see your brother going for a loan, you should be 'happy'???

If it's a matter of principle to have nothing to do with Microsoft, then don't run Microsoft programs. If you're just picking the best software for your business to get work done, then there is no particular reason to drop Novell. You can't have it both ways.

Principles have nothing to do with it... it's a matter of engineering.

Microsoft threatened lawsuits over 200 patents but licensed them to SUSE. Our IT dept (as well as many other IT departments) saw a potential for incompatible licenses after that licensing agreement and made a purchasing decision not to purchase SUSE or other Novell products due to potential incompatibilities in licensing.

Our IT dept (as well as many other IT departments) saw a potential for incompatible licenses after that licensing agreement and made a purchasing decision not to purchase SUSE or other Novell products due to potential incompatibilities in licensing.

Ahh... that's interesting. Still it does not rule out using OpenSUSE, which is not a Novell product (in the sense that they do not sell it, and OpenSUSE users are not Novell customers) and is not covered by the no-sue agreement.

Ironically, I know companies which started Linux (SUSE) adoption upon hearing the news about collaboration.

If nothing else, that was one huge pitch to use Linux coming from nobody else but Microsoft itself.

If you have business and have heaps of Windows servers and Windows clients, adopting something (e.g. RH or Debian) what isn't targeting heterogeneous environment where M$ dominates, is plain too risky. With SUSE the risk is much lower and calling Novell support on M$ vs. Linux compatibility is alre

Heh. I know of nobody that wasn't already using Linux. Maybe it made some gullible CTO's think that SUSE had special magical connection powers to Windows but these are the same people who probably bought into the whole 'SCO owns Linux' thing too and didn't jump to a Linux distro until their Redmond masters gave them the thumbs up.

If you have huge install base of anything, you get sensitive as to not ruin everything with e.g. bad budget decision or system update.

SCO? Didn't even registered. CxO's do not read news anyway. And for the rest they have legal counsel on board.

Novell? Same thing. Many companies deployed Linux as cheap backbone for everything what is of Unix origin. Linux in enterprises is most popular for Oracle: RH and SUSE invested heavily into making Linux g

But when switching to Suse, people *are* joining the subset of Linux users protected from Ballmers patent war dreams.

That's not the case. Only Novell customers (that is, those paying Novell for SLES) and Microsoft customers are covered by the no-sue agreement. OpenSUSE users are not included, so I don't think you are breaking solidarity in that sense.

I don't know what elderly people you work with, but none, I repeat, none of the people I work with have every known how to shut down or reboot Vista without me explaining.

MS has hidden the Shut Down and Reboot options under a very small, and unassuming button with a triangle on it in the very lower right of the menu. The Sleep button is the big, red button with the power symbol on it.

I know anecdotal evidence and everything; but your test fails for Vista on every user I have worked with.

Why are you limiting yourself to Vista? I can honestly say that my 60+ year old grandma wouldn't be able to install any OS I've ever seen. I know very many very smart people who didn't grow up with computers that need help setting everything up still. The GP is an obvious troll. Connecting to the wireless router is a dead giveaway even without the other steps.

I have hard time belieeving your grandma was able to install Windows and not Linux.
1) Pop in Fedora Live , hit "Install to Hard drive"
2) Open up what word processor (usually only one on a Live cd)
2b) Type letter, save as/export as PDF
3) Open up Firefox/Gmail or Thunderbird send email
4) Take picture, plug SSD into SSD reader on machine
5) Here it gets tricky, can't remember if Linux distros auto add printers... then again I can't remember Windows auto adding printers either.
And why exactly does your grandma test include installing and setting up and operating system?

to test how accessable a word processor is. One of the most common activities at work is attaching a file to an email so we just create a document to attach. Feel free to switch it to a spreadsheet but last time I checked most grandmas know what a letter is more so then a spreadsheet.

What does your grandma attaching a document to an email have to do with work? My mother, who's a grandma (if it matters) has no trouble with this on any OS I've thrown at her except it wasn't word. It was a picture which is more common than writing a letter in a word processing program and far more likely. In fact, I can't think of a time when she's opened office/productivity software other than to make greeting cards with clip art.

Because it's a common activity. Nearly 30% of all email has an attachment according the documentation I have. If you can attach a document to an email it's pretty safe to assume you can attach a picture, mp3, video clip, etc.

Most people do three things:

Send EmailSurf the WebUse a word processor

Those are three activities to test. You write and attach the memo to kill two tests at the same time. You don't get all day for these kind of tests so you have to compact you test cases down to a slim as possible.

Ethel, install this operating system by following it's instructions.When you are done open a word processor and write a letter to some one and save it.

sounds like an interesting list. i should try this out, if i get enough free time;)

They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start? Seriosuly they all know they are in Central Time, why the hell would people in Minnesota pick Chicago (their words not mine.)

i guess this depends on location. here, less than 1% would have an idea what timezone they are in. choosing a city, yes, that will work.

With all the Linux fanboys and MS haters, they need a reality check that not everyone can write BASH scripts, use VIM\EMACS, and program in PERL. Linux suffers from a bad case of denial in the INTUITIVE department.

why would simple users need that ? they don't. for some 5 yers at least.i have set desktop linux for several people. with few exceptions (strong cases of "i'm used to old way and i don't have to pay for it"), all cope surprisingly well.i even had a user tell me a week ago that they feel wind

Linux has always failed. First and worse stumbling block, to this day is the Time Zone selection. They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start?

Troll much?

Anyway, which distro are you on about? I've installed Suse, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Knoppix and XP (twice) recently. XP gave me most bother - I've only got a preinstall of Vista so can't say how good it is. No, I'm not a Grandma.

because that way tests the ability to use the word processor (and the various formatting function to get a decent-looking letter), the ability to save the file, the ability to attach a file and the ability to find where you saved the file (so, for instance, if the word processor saves to ~/Documents by default, and the email client looks for attachments in ~/ by default it may not be immediately obvious where the file has gone)

Well played, master troll. You knew Linux live CDs pass these tests regularly with old and young alike. MS Windows is the OS that fails these tests (particularly installation; often no NIC drivers). You got myself and others to respond. Hopefully you're a Linux advocate using reverse psychology...

My grandma managed to get windows xp installed. But then had a startling realization. She had no network drivers. It made it impossible to get a office application or any drivers to fix the problem. She thought about maybe driving to a library to get try to download them there, but she was without usb stick.

The point of the deal was blatantly obvious: Microsoft paid Novell loads of money so that people like you will go around to places like slashdot making posts like the above to create the impression that linux is of questionable legality. Microsoft hopes that business people will get wind of your fears and therefore shy away from linux.